Just a few tickets left - Question Time - TONIGHT

Not everybody wants to see England cave in to France in the international football friendly this evening, so if you're London-based you might just fancy attending the third Travolution Question Time.

The venue and time:

• Soho Hotel, Richmond Mews, London W1F 0BB
• 6pm-8pm

The panel:

• Andrew Botterill, chief executive Global Travel Group
• Ed Kamm, chief operating officer Lastminute.com
• Kenny Picken, managing director Traveltek
• Peter Ward, co-founder and co-chief executive WAYN.com
• Stephane Durand, UK & Ireland managing director Amadeus

The practicalities:

Ring Angela Hamilton-Jones on 020 8652 3803 or email to obtain a ticket (just £55+VAT).

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

An interStella deal?

For a nice change, the talk is not about the previous night's frivolities, but quite serious.

Stella Travel Services chose the ABTA Convention to get journos together to announce its deal to buy Global Travel Group.

This kind of thing gets the travel industry here frothing at the mouth as it involves travel agents and some big personalities.

It's all very interesting - but in reality indicates how fragile the independent travel agency market has become - where consortia (GTG runs 800-odd agencies in the UK) can seemingly attempt to buy one another or merge on a weekly basis.

At the Triton conference earlier this year we wrote how disappointing it was that its main event of the year hardly mentioned what any major consortium of agents should be doing to improve its presence to online channels. Which is vital.

Let's wait and see what Stella decide to do...

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Travolution Autumn Conf: The independent travel agent perspective

Global Travel Group product development and e-commerce director Jason Edwards had the unenviable task of representing independent travel agents to the crowd of assembled online travel types, and came out bullish, stating immediately that

The independent sector has been massively underestimated - travel agents have been multi-channel distributors for a long time.

The formula for success in the ITA space, according to Jason? It's the product and development provided by the consortium, and the mentality and initiative provided by the agent.

Putting my Travel Weekly hat on for a second (just for a second, Kev...) it was nice to hear knowledgable salespeople brought into the equation.

Global's grasp of where agents need to be is obvious, but as Jason says channels such as affiliate or SEO marketing and social networking are difficult when resource and understanding are lacking - and it's here that many (though far from all) ITAs are vulnerable.

Nathan Midgley